Het voedselbos is an educational farm in Flanders designed on the permaculture principles. Permaculture (permanent agriculture) is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non – material needs in a sustainable way.We practice Permaculture farming in all aspects : f.e. making compost, use everything (no waste), mulching, improve the soil, save water, handiwork, building with natural, local materials, ...We organise PDC – courses (permaculture design course), workshops, work days and open days on different aspects of permaculture for individuals and groups, for all ages.We have a social garden experiment with local and international volunteers.We are coaching permaculture projects and redesigning school gardens into edible playgrounds .Compared to a production farm, our core business is education and experience. We have a educational garden on 0,7 ha with more than 600 types of different plants, trees, shrubs, mushrooms,...all organised following the permaculture principles. We have a greenhouse and in the garden there are also different wooden structures made during courses. We have a compost toilet, a roundhouse with a rocket mass heater that we use as classroom. We have a camping area in our orchard and we are building an outdoor shower and a goatshed.In 2016 we are planning to organize more activities for schools on our site, so we will work on developping our garden to welcome groups of children. We are also developing a small plant nursery on site.We have a planning permission to expand the main building with a farm shop and tool shed in roundwood using local materials and we will start on this project in 2016.Starting from Januari '16 we would like to host 2 EVS-volunteers in our project for 12 months.The volunteers will complement our local volunteer staff and international short term volunteers.They will support us in building and maintaining our project as a place where people can experiment and learn together.By doing this the volunteers will get a hands on learning experience on permaculture, in all its aspects.The volunteers will have the chance to integrate in the organization and support in receiving groups, organising an open day, the farmers market, support training moments, ... and take responsibillity on own projects if possible.Long term volunteers can make a durable bond with our organisation. This exchange and learning process is invaluable for the volunteer and for us as an organization.We want our volunteers to be mature, responsible for themselves and are able to work together with and being openminded for groups like children and people with special needs. Important to us is enthousiasm, motivation and interest, why people choose specifically for our project. Knowledge or experience in gardening, permaculture or natural building is welcome, but most of all we are looking for enthousiast volunteers who like learning by doing and enjoy diversity.As impact for the volunteer we expect a higher awareness of their own behavior in group, awareness of climate change and knowing what they can do or change by their individual behavior. They will gain experiences and bring them home to their own projects , context and environment.For us we expect more possibillities, more points of view, more locally based, continuation of personal projects of the volunteers, growth in working with volunteers, feedback,... We feel privileged to be referred by some of our previous volunteers as a project that brought big changes into their lives. Their stay at our place helped them to choose a more sustainable way of life and sometimes inspired them to set up their own project in their neighbourhood.